While everyone else was working through the surprise that was Hestia within the Dungeon (And Hermes by extention), Tina meanwhile decided that she needed to prepare herself for the events to come, because if memory was serving her correctly, and it did, something big was going to occur soon and it would fully involve the Hestia Familia.
Because however it will take a certain trigger for the events to occur, that trigger being Hestia's kidnapping and Bell being roughhoused by jealous idiots, she could go hands-off on the situation. She would rather focus on further self-discovery regarding her powers to be more prepared, so she silently retreated away from everyone else.
Once she returned to the massive, gargantuan tree at the center of the floor, she took her helmet off once again and relaxed. It would take some time until things cascade out of control, and as long as nothing goes off-script too badly, she could still manage whatever comes their way.
With her worries safely dispelled... or as safely as she thinks can go... she laid down and decided to relax herself fully so she can take another nap. If anything would happen, her heightened senses would alert her just fine... or so she thinks.
And while Tina drifted off into a deep sleep... unaware she had a secret watcher who had also been hiding off in the trees.
"Phew, didn't notice me..." A feminine voice spoke as she eyes the red-skinned woman from the safety of her faraway branch, glad she wasn't discovered. This turned out to be Ray, a Xenos. Talking, sentient monsters who awoke with a fully intact consciousness.
The Xenos are anomalies that hide out from all life, for the dungeon perceive them as enemies and adventurers think they are like all other monsters to be hunted down. As such, their struggle is doubled since their existence is besieged on both fronts simultaneously. Therefore, they rely on hideouts where no adventurers go, such as undiscovered safe zones and the massive tree on Floor 18...
Ray was one of the Xenos' senior members, a sentient Harpy who managed to fully unlock human speech. Currently, she had been out on a mission to collect the fruits the gigantic tree grows, for they are as sweet as they are nutritious, when she had to hide out for fear of discovery. But seeing she went unnoticed, she breathed out heavily in relief and made sure she remained unseen, slowly climbing down the tree on the other end where she could sense and see no adventurers.
Once Ray was gone, Tina suddenly opened one eye and glanced over in the direction where she was last at, smirking lightly to herself. "Xenos, huh? As long as I don't antagonize them, it should be fine..." She mused to herself and went back to sleep, closing her eye and this time letting her consciousness drift for real.
Hours passed before a scene all too familiar to her due to outside-knowledge occured, a scene that instinctually woke her up due to her heightened senses picking up many tense emotions in the air around the floor. Worry, guilt, rage, fear. All emotions the Dark Side fed on, emotions so strong in the air it was impossible not to feel some kind of narcotic effect from it due to the sheer nature of being a sith.
However, there was also something else. It was like a feeling, a nagging that suddenly alerted Tina that truly took her attention away from the occurances of the 18th floor and directed her attention upwards. Something had changed, something big, something drastic.
She immediately connected the dots: Mord and co. weren't supposed to kidnap Hestia and challenge Bell until a day later, then the main troupe of Loki Familia had already returned to the surface and only the auxiliar forces remained with Tione.
Something was wrong... something had changed, thrown things outside the calculated scope of plans, and that something started to worry her. However, before she could take action, a sudden surge of energy erupted, an energy so oppressive, so distinctly alien from the world that it was unmistakeable:
Arcanum.
This meant only one thing, either Hestia or Hermes had released some of their Arcanum within the dungeon. It was too early for it... way too early, Hestia was supposed to only release her Arcanum after she was released and confronted Mord and his entourage, forcing them to stand down.
This... had thrown things out of control.
The floor suddenly started to violently rumble and shake, quaking like it was about to collapse in on itself. The light that usually shone like an artificial sun over their heads turned bright red, and a massive skull formed within the crystals of the ceiling.
Tina knew the signs... the Dungeon was reacting violently to the sensation of Arcanum, unleashing its burning hatred with full capacity, and it was such hatred.
Tina fell to her knees and clasped at her chest where her heart was with both hands, grunting and groaning in a mixture of unbearable pain and a sense of overflow. The sheer level of hatred was so absurdly high, so oppressively omnipresent within the Dungeon all of a sudden it completely overwhelmed her extremely emotion-sensitive senses.
It felt like such an overwhelming presence had completely overtaken her every fiber of being. The hate the Dungeon expressed in that moment was omnipotent by comparison to what she could feel.
"How..." She began to speak to herself, coughing out the words with struggle. "How can such hatred even exist... what the fuck did the gods do to the dungeon!?" Tina asked to no one in particular, glaring up at the ceiling as she watched it begin to crack and break into a million pieces.
Then... the confirmation that change had occured showed itself, because what descended from the ceiling was not simply ab abberant Goliath - pitch black with white hair and red eyes, a humongous 30 meter humanoid build and an oppressive aura that made distinct its overwhelming strength - but something else accompanied it...
And that something gave grave alarm to Tina.
That something...
Was a Juggernaut.
The Juggernaut was a being the Dungeon summons only under extreme circumstances, where the damage of a floor exceeds roughly 20% of its total integrity, or if someone continuously harms the dungeon for extended periods of time. It was a unique monster which's strength scales with the floor it spawns on, making it a Monster Rex, a Boss Monster unlike any other.
Worse, its unique black exoskeleton has magic-deflecting properties, making it the stuff of nightmares for mages of any type. However, what made the Juggernaut so uniquely dangerous wasn't its magic-reflection, but how heavily it specs into offense.
Trading off almost all physical defense, it had a lanky, bony build, resembling the dried out husk of a dragon, with claws, teeth and a tail so sharp that you could cut yourself just looking at it. The creature was above all things fast. So fast that even the weakest variant of it, a Floor 1 Juggernaut, would sport the speed equivalent of a Novice level 3 adventurer.
This Juggernaut was spawned on Floor 18. This meant that its overall strength, if one were to use an adventurer's rating, was in the middle area of Level 5.
Tina acted immediately, jumping down the mammoth tree with full force, crashing into the ground near one of its roots before dashing at full speed towards the Juggernaut to intercept it.
Normal adventurers could not fight this thing, and one of the very few that could, Ryuu Lion, suffered too deep a psychological trauma to do so. Tione and Asfi would be distracted with handling coordination and assault of the abberant Goliath, which meant nobody with the strengths of a level 4 or above was able to intercept it.
No one except for Tina, who's sith powers she feels she has gotten used to enough to be the nightmarish creature's opponent.
It did not take long for her to arrive at the Juggernaut's location, and when she did, her eyes narrowed underneath her helmet.
The skeletal beast had already began to indiscriminately kill adventurers and monsters alike, devouring the monsters' Magic Cores in order to empower itself further, expressing some modicum of character via greed for power.
This made Tina gulp while she drew her Ancient Sith Lord's Blade, taking on a Vaapad stance. She could not affort to be defensive and hesitant. She needed maximum aggression and pressure, and only Vaapad was a style worthy of being called oppressively offensive to her tastes.
Vaapad was a stance that utilizes a moderate bond with the Dark Side, taking in controlled, measured amounts of its powers within the User in exchange for superhuman blows that are hard to deflect and parry, blows that aim to viciously tear apart the enemy with aggression.
Tina and the Juggernaut made eye contact for only the fraction of a moment before both moved at the same time and clashed, the echo of their connected impact to each others resounding across the whole floor.
Meanwhile...
Ryuu looked ahead at the fight with complete dread. The Juggernaut, the creature that once killed her entire familia, this seemingly invincible nightmare, had spawned, and it paralyzed her to the core. She fell to her knees, despair gripping her strongly.
Then she spotted the black-armored adventurer she recalled to be Tina and her eyes widened. She knew only the basics about Tina, that she was a fresh recruit, a newly aquired level 1 within Hestia Familia, and dread gripped her much tighter.
"NO! DON'T FIGHT THAT THI-" She was about to warn Tina as loudly as she could, but the words died in her throat when she saw the two forces clash with seemingly even intensity and speed.
Surprised and utterly shocked, she could only choke back whatever else she wanted to say as she watched Tina and the Juggernaut trade blows impact for impact, clash for clash with speeds that were hard to follow even with her extremely well trained eyes.
"Wha..." She wondered.
Meanwhile, Loki Familia's main forces were rounding up all the adventurers and reorganizing them all. Riveria, one of the very few people who knows about the Juggernaut from Ryuu, walked towards the elf to pick her up and have her join the main effort when she, too, beheld the battle between Tina and the Juggernaut.
"Who... wait, isn't that Hestia Familia's newest recruit?" Riveria wondered out loud as she watched the black-clad sith move at speeds that should be beyond impossible for a Level 1.
Back with Tina, she used her sturdy blade to deflect the Juggernaut's tail and claws with a fluid parry before going for a jab, thrusting her blade forward only to miss as the Juggernaut retreated a step, then swung its leg to use its hind claws. Tina leapt up with an overhead sommersaul, landing to the Juggernaut's side before swinging at it again, only for her blade and its left claw to clash once again.
They traded blows yet again, her sword swinging wildly and with seemingly random erranticism that only those familiar with Vaapad could recognize as a structured assault. Her every blow created shockwaves, cratering the ground slightly and making resounding BOOM's occur.
The Juggernaut was much the same, it couldn't parry or deflect so it met each attack head on with equal and opposite force. Any other weapon would have chipped and withered under such intense clashes, but Tina's blade and the Juggernaut's claws remained sharp and flawlessly structured.
Tina understood that this lead nowhere, the Juggernaut would just continue to infinitely riposte her attacks with equal magnitude. She had to overwhelm it differently.
So she leapt back a huge distance, creating several dozen meters between them before she threw the blade into the air and clapped both hands together, generating an intense, highly focused amount of Sith Lightning between her palms. She compressed the lightning into a Sorcerer technique known as a Kinetic Thunderclap, firing it repeatedly at the Juggernaut.
The beast did not recognize the alien concept of the Force and assumed it to be a magic attack, standing eerily still thinking its exoskeleton would reflect the attack.
Thus begun its first mistake and the first victorious exchange in Tina's favor, for the Thunderclap connected with full force into the Exoskeleton, causing the Juggernaut to stagger back as its outer shell was showing small, slight cracks and initial chips in it.
It immediately recognized the danger and began to evade all other thunderclaps, dodging and weaving past them and slowly closing the distance between itself and Tina.
Tina stopped the barrage for a moment in order to catch her sword that she had tossed up and coated it in sith lightning, heaving back with a two-handed grip, taking a stance similar to a baseball player about to bat an incoming ball, and swung in a similar fashion, ejecting the lightning from her weapon in a highly concentrated, beam-like arc before her.
This attack was a deriveration of the Jedi's Saber Storm, an ability that would harness the plasma-inducing heat of the lightsaber and eject some of it like a projectile in the form of a scorching burn. Only Tina modified it to instead eject her lightning.
The Juggernaut, too close to properly dodge, took the hit head on and lost its right claw to the attack, the concentrated lightning beam cleaving into its exoskeleton and flesh and severing the limb by its shoulder while also throwing it backwards with a heavy stagger.
"You're not escaping me!" Tina roared as she leapt up with zeal, intent to strike the draconic creature down with her next attack.
But the Juggernaut used its tail in a desperate move, arcing it up with full force. The sheer kinetic energy released by this move caused a physical shockwave to emit, and that shockwave threw Tina high into the air.
Before she could adjust however, a sudden shockwave hit her from the side...
The Abberant Goliath had come to the Juggernaut's aid, using its concentrated roar to emit a pure, condenced shockwave of air into Tina, thundering her into the floor with enough force to incapacitate anyone else who would be hit by it.
Tina however remained safe... at a cost...
When the dust settled and the crater became visible, Tina stood tall...
Her armor cracked, her red skin exposed, her helmet completely shattered meaning her head was entirely uncovered.
Her secret identity as a Sith Pureblood was no longer secret.